FALLBROOK  Chuck McLaughlin’s story as a brewmaster began like most others: at home.

“About five years ago, my daughter gave me a home brew kit for Father’s Day,” he said. “It slowly took over my kitchen, and after that it took over my garage.

“And finally,” he added with a laugh, “this place took over my 401(k).”

This place, where we sat on Friday morning, was the newly opened Fallbrook Brewing Co. at 136 N. Main Ave. With his brother Stephan, McLaughlin transformed a long-vacant storefront on the corner of Main and Hawthorne Street, reusing lumber stripped from the ceiling to build countertops and signs.

The lease was signed in February and the sign’s been in the window for several tantalizing months, but it was just last week that the brothers McLaughlin opened the doors to their first patrons.

Regular business hours commenced on Wednesday afternoon, with beers such as Reche Rye and Sleeping Indian IPA on tap.

On Friday, hours before Fallbrook Brewing’s all-important first weekend, I sat down with the McLaughlins to discover how they plan to make it on Main.

At a time when storefronts up and down the street sit vacant, Chuck McLaughlin acknowledged that it has been a calculated risk to invest in downtown Fallbrook.

Their own storefront was unoccupied for four years after a home and clothing boutique closed its doors.

“But the community has embraced us wholeheartedly,” he said. “I haven’t heard a bad word about it.”

And you’re not likely to: A brewery is exactly the kind of establishment that folks have been clamoring for in downtown Fallbrook, oriented toward a younger crowd, open after 5 p.m., tied in with a wider community that may well bring brewery tours to town.

Stephan added: “Even since we’ve opened, we’ve talked to some people who are opening a wine bar right across the street. And some of the local eateries are changing their hours to match ours. So we’re really seeing the community take hold of it, and take ownership of it.”

There is precedent for a successful craft brewery in Fallbrook. During the 1980s, two men, Clint Stromberg and Paul Holborn, launched Bolt Brewing here — it did well, and is still known among San Diego beer fans.

Perhaps the most innovative part of the business is the way the McLaughlins have tied in with Fallbrook’s restaurants.

Because serving food would have added another level of difficulty and expense, they have opted instead to invite patrons to bring their own dinners to the brewpub. There is a list of good eateries by the door, and they can tell you offhand which ones will deliver.

“I don’t know the restaurant business,” McLaughlin said. “I’ve been studying the brewery business for awhile now — and by ‘studying’ I mean frequenting establishments.”

Meanwhile, the brothers are betting that what’s good for Fallbrook’s restaurants will be good for the brewery, as well.

“Our whole thing is local — we’re hoping we can bring the whole community back down to Main Avenue,” said Chuck McLaughling, echoing what local leaders have been telling me for a decade. “It just seemed like we were always driving somewhere — half an hour to Vista or Temecula. We’re hoping to keep people in town.”

A question likely to arise is whether Fallbrook Brewing will concoct some kind of avocado beer, and at this point, the closest they’ve come is a saison brewed with honey from avocado blossoms.

“That’s probably as close as we can get with avocado in a beer,” said McLaughlin, adding that Fallbrook’s famous green fruit is just too oily. “Oil and beer, they don’t mix.”

But even more to the point: Beer and the avocado festival go extremely well together, and the McLaughlins are already looking forward to next year’s festival, the Christmas parade and 2014 Hot Summer Nites, given their prime curbside location on Main.

Even without a special event to fill the seats, all signs pointed to good business for Fallbrook Brewing in its first week.

“Last night, we ended up staying open later than our posted hours because people were hanging out, having a good time,” said Stephan McLaughlin. “We’d like to have that problem every night.”

For any upstart brewery, the business path is pretty well established: Start by selling your beer at your brewery, then expand to other establishments, delivering beer on tap to local restaurants. For most breweries, bottling is a distant goal requiring additional facilities and equipment and staff.

McLaughlin said he was being approached by restaurateurs before the brewery was even open, and that he plans to start distributing locally some time after the operation has found its feet.

For now, he is just thrilled to be the man behind the first craft brewery on Main.

“A brewery in Fallbrook — as a home brewer, it’s just been a dream since that first batch,” he told me.

Fallbrook Brewing is open for business afternoons and evenings, Wednesday through Sunday. Visit